I think we can probably agree on how remarkably ego-centric much of the corporate world has become.
An observation that has fascinated me for years is that modern Satanism is not really about worshipping the Devil. At its core, it is about the worship of the ego. The individual self becomes the highest authority. It rests on ideas such as self-preservation as the highest principle, social Darwinism, "eugenics", and relative morality, where human beings themselves define what is right and wrong.
I realise that comparison may sound extremely provocative, and most of it may happen unconsciously, but I am actually quite serious about it. When I look at parts of the corporate world, I often see many of those same values expressed in a more socially acceptable form.
Self-preservation becomes career advancement, even if the "collateral damage" is other people.
Social Darwinism becomes competition between individuals, departments, and organisations. Pure "survival of the fittest".
Eugenics becomes the tendency to continuously reproduce the same leadership profiles by selecting people who think alike, behave alike, and share the same values and assumptions.
Relative morality appears whenever decisions that would be considered questionable in one context suddenly become acceptable because they improve efficiency, shareholder value, or quarterly results.
I am not claiming that companies are Satanic per se. I am simply pointing out that if you remove the religious language and look only at the underlying values, the overlap can at times be surprisingly difficult to ignore.
What resonated most with me, however, was your observation about overqualification.
I have often wondered whether the issue is not competence itself, but perceived threat. A manager may happily hire someone less experienced than themselves. Hiring someone substantially more experienced requires a degree of confidence and security that is unfortunately not always present.
How do you convince someone that you genuinely do not aspire to their chair?
How do you convince them that your priorities may have changed, that life experience may have altered your ambitions, and that you may be perfectly content contributing without climbing?
Many recruiters seem unable to imagine that possibility. They assume everyone is still playing the same game.
The irony is that organisations often claim to seek the best people, while quietly filtering out candidates who might challenge existing assumptions. It can easily result in a situation where the common denominator gradually becomes the safest rather than the strongest candidate.
I like to say: Don't hire for the best cultural fit, but for the best challenging of the culture.
I also suspect this is particularly true in Denmark. We like to think of ourselves as egalitarian and non-hierarchical, yet there is often a surprisingly strong pressure towards conformity. We are comfortable with people who fit expected patterns. We become less comfortable when somebody steps outside them.
Another aspect of your article that struck me is the tendency to equate decisiveness with competence. Fast decisions are often celebrated, while thoughtful decisions are interpreted as hesitation. Yet experience tends to teach the opposite lesson. The longer you have lived and worked, the more aware you become of complexity, unintended consequences, and the limits of certainty.
I would love to be asked, “Are you able to make fast decisions?”
My answer would promptly be:
“Yes. I just did.” :-)
Perhaps what many organisations are really selecting for is not competence, but predictability. Not necessarily the most capable candidate, but the candidate who most closely resembles their existing mental model of success.
That may also explain why experienced people sometimes struggle more than expected. The very experiences that taught them nuance, humility, empathy, and complexity can make them appear less certain than someone who has not yet discovered how complicated reality actually is.
Like you, I hope there is another path. Not because I think ambition is wrong, and not because I think leadership is wrong, but because I believe a healthy society should also have room for people whose primary strengths are wisdom, empathy, integrity, mentorship, and care. If every institution rewards only the traits associated with competition and self-interest, we should not be surprised when those traits become dominant throughout society.
I just bumped into a newspaper on the Internet that I didn't know of, an English language paper about Sweden, the Sweden Herald. And there is a tiny note about a topic that has been talked about a lot, but, you know how it goes – the news in general loses interest in things that are still bad but unchanged. In this case, something new may have happened (it is not certain yet), and therefore the note – the article is here: https://swedenherald.com/article/report-union-suspends-action-against-tesla
It's about Tesla. In Sweden, workers at the receiving terminals that take in Tesla cars to Sweden (they arrive by ship, as they are not produced locally) are on strike. they refuse to offload the cars, and they are blocking others from doing it. It has been like that for the last two years now! And the reason: Tesla refuses to make a collective agreement with the trade union. In the USA, Tesla also don't want to make agreements with trade unions, and there is is generally accepted by the society, because of the cynicism I mentioned in my article. People in the USA by large see it as good that the low paid workers can be kept down, because that will make the cars cheaper, becaise it maintains the divisive society that the middle class believes it benefits from – and just because. In Sweden, Musk has decided to destroy the power ot the trade unions by similarly refuse to make an agreement about work conditions, salaries, etc.
This "just because", fits well with your description of satanism as a concept, because even without satan himself, this is pure evil. Honestly! And I am not aware of what the workers demand here, but it is probably similar to what they demand from all other larger employers, so it shouldn't rock any boat. But Musk hates trade unions, and he is willing to lose lots of money in sales in Sweden for the purpose of proving that he is the master, he decides, and the workers have nothing to say.
It's about principles and power, not about reason or even profit.
This is social Darwinism in its highest incarnation, as Musk could make such an agreement just like that, losing nothing on it, and become more popular by doing it – but to him, it is more important to display to the world that workers are nothing, and he is almighty. That they are in different worlds, and he feels no empathy or responsibility for them.
Tesla is just one of many companies that have displayed such a behavior. Often completely irrational, but the managers in the process are being rewarded for standing firm against the workers.
Competence is definitely not all about knowing how to do things, it is very much also – or only – about attitude and mentality. You just have to fit the expected way of thinking, or esle you do not fit in. I think you are right in seeing this as fear for a threat that you could be, if they let you in with more strength than you strictly speaking need for the job.
The hires are not the best, you're right. If they are those that look most like those who are there, we could indeed benefit from hiring some others instead – as you say, those who could challenge status quo and help developing the company.
That question about fast decisions: your reply is funny, but I have been asked this many times, and I always try to explain that I can, but I typically don't want to, because decisions get better if they are based on careful considerations. That always fall short of their expectations, and sometimes they start explaining that sometimes there's no time to think... Well, why should that be an excuse for making a bad decision? I then ask. And the light in their eyes goes out in that moment, from when they just try to end the interview.
You touch something important: that it looks to some people like you are insecure and fambling for an answer, if you want to bring in some experience and good reasoning. They often ask a question that are supposed to be answered quickly, so if you spend time answering it well, you are automatically wrong in their eyes. Your experience is not interesting when all they wanted was to tick off something on their list of desired skills, and to them, "not interesting" means "do not hire".
Many companies are modelled somewhat after the military command structure, which is a deliberate choise. In such a structure, if to consider it as it really is, you are exptected to lose losts of members (when soldiers and officers die in a war), so everybody is supposed to be dispensable, hence, nobody is they for their personal qualifications – only for their ability to fill in a defined position, that makes the structure stay intact.
For that reason, I doubt that most companies will change. At least the existing companies. You need to construct something that has a non-military basis and philosophy, and then you need to find people who are not ruined by that traditional company thinking, but who can actually work well under the new settings.
It is more difficult than one would imagine to replace what is almost a complete, known, world – with something we don't even know what is.
The carrot to aim for is, though, that everybody will benefit, because such an organization will not be designed to be destroyed and rebuilt non-stop – it can grow positively, based on the values created, and people in it can grow with the company.
Of course, the broken people who know only power struggles and back-stabbing will suffer, should they ever enter, so they must stay out. What to do with them, I don't know, but maybe they can get a job at Tesla.
Your story about Elon Musk and Tesla reminded me of something else: How relative morality may have been born, or at least institutionalised.
The story goes that Henry Ford, after improving production efficiency and increasing output, wanted to lower the price of his cars so ordinary people could afford them. The Dodge brothers, who were investors in Ford Motor Company, preferred larger dividends. The matter eventually ended up in court, and the court effectively sided with the principle that the company should primarily serve the interests of its shareholders.
Whether that specific case deserves all the credit or blame is less important than the principle behind it. Once shareholder interests become the highest moral priority, many things begin to change. Decisions that would previously have been questioned morally suddenly become not only acceptable but praiseworthy.
There are many examples where economics and capitalism have gradually bent morality rather than simply operating within it.
In the case of Tesla and Sweden, my understanding is that the resistance to collective agreements is ultimately about maintaining managerial freedom and keeping labour costs down. In other words, favouring those higher in the pyramid over those lower in it. Whether one agrees with unions or not, it is difficult not to notice that the moral argument often shifts depending on whose interests are being protected.
That is what I find fascinating. Morality appears absolute right up until the moment it becomes expensive. Then suddenly it becomes negotiable. And again, it is one of the pillars in modern satanism.
Yes, this also ties into your point about social Darwinism. The strongest defence of these systems is often that they are efficient. The strongest criticism is that efficiency gradually becomes the measure by which everything else is judged. Once efficiency becomes the highest virtue, empathy, loyalty, fairness, craftsmanship, wisdom, and community all risk becoming secondary concerns.
Another thing your article made me think about is our collective obsession with speed.
Fast decisions Fast growth Fast careers Fast communication Fast responses.
Perhaps I am simply getting old, but I increasingly find myself wanting the opposite. I want to slow down. I want longer conversations. I want decisions that are thought through. I want fewer words and more meaning. I want depth instead of velocity.
Yet many organisations seem to equate speed with intelligence. If somebody answers immediately, they are decisive. If somebody reflects before answering, they are hesitant. Experience suggests exactly the opposite. The more one understands a subject, the more one tends to appreciate its complexity.
I have always found it amusing that organisations ask for wisdom and then structure their processes in ways that reward impulsiveness.
It is all about worshipping the intellect. As you know, I work with Kabbalah. The intellect is only one side of the tree of life. The other side is represented by intuition and feelings. When those two sides meet in a balanced blend, true gnosis happens.
Your observations about military structures also resonate with me. Many organisations are indeed built around assumptions inherited from command-and-control systems. The individual becomes less important than the role. The role becomes less important than the structure. The structure becomes more important than the human beings it was originally intended to serve.
The irony is that companies often claim that people are their greatest asset while simultaneously designing systems around the assumption that everyone is replaceable.
What gives me some hope is that reality eventually has a way of self-correcting.
I think of some of the large organisations we both know. They often achieve impressive results despite of their obvious flaws, but I sometimes wonder how much more they could achieve if they operated from healthier principles. I find myself thinking that their success may have happened despite certain aspects of their culture rather than because of them.
The dream, at least for me, is not the destruction of existing organisations. It is the creation of better ones.
Perhaps the first step would be to replace the HR department with a Corporate Philosophy department.
Instead of asking: “How do we optimise people?” the question becomes: “What kind of human beings are we trying to help become successful here?”
That seems like a much more interesting question. And since every new department needs a manager, I would like to nominate you for the role.
Thanks for the job! I will immediately start implementing the latest management fad of the month, just to show the employees that it's not about them, it's about some arbitrary principles that I read about in a bestselling book (where I read only a few phrases from the foreword).
And then, only then, when they claim to follow the method we work after, we can start pretending that we value the individuals – meaning, those who are particularly good at following the method. Those individuals.
That will make me popular with my management, which is the most important to me, being a Corporate Philosophy Manager – after all, what is a corporation if not the managers can stick together?
And, fun aside, this is partly what those large organizations we both know, that you mentioned, are based on. As the concept is self-enforcing, in that any result coming out of it is claimed to prove that it works, leading to doing it even more, any role that is about asking questions will only be successful if the answers to the question fit the expectations. Questions are rethorical, not means to change perspectives.
About Tesla in Sweden: it is a bit weird to try getting information about the effect of the strike and blockade – reports vary from significant influence on the decline of Tesla sales, to "no effect at all", depending on who talks about it – just another example of how we speak business speak more than actually try to inform each other (ref. your reel in the chat).
While I understand why you want to repair what is broken, rather than tear down and buiild something else, which can seem daunting and perhaps not even get better, I don't think it will help at all in the business corporations. They sometimes do that – they adjust their way of talking about themselves by setting up a QA department, or a Lean department, or whatever, that can then be used as part of a marketing narrative, internally and externally, but which will always operate at a level way below the top management, who will continue doing what they always do. In fact, sometimes the top management will not even know that there's such a department, and they don't really care.
Trying to change an old organization, based on military principles, is like buying a new kind of weapon for it, but still maintaining the same command structure, and the same tactics. That new weapon might never be used at all, despite its apparent advantages, because it isn't supported by the way of working – the middle managers will send out the cavalry first, then the tanks, and only when everything else has failed, they might allow for a progressive young officer to employ the new weapon, but secretly, and only in a remote corner of the war. Whatever comes out of it will never be used for any strategy changes.
Personally, I don't want neither war nor weapons at work. I want people, who really do something because they want to, and who do it in ways they enjoy, to get results they can be proud of. It may be that this generates money, but, realistically – the money earned by a few shareholders, held up against the happiness and ability to survive for hundreds of thousands of employees, and millions of customers – which should weight more? Without producing happiness, a company has no right to exist. And then, indeed, we can hope for reality to be self-correcting.
About the morality: you're right, it is often replaced by profit, because nobody wants to pay for the morality. But I think it often was, from the start, just a word. Many planners and managers in the organization never had morality as a key parameter for anything they were doing. They just used it to talk about what they were doing in a way that more people could digest.
I think we can probably agree on how remarkably ego-centric much of the corporate world has become.
An observation that has fascinated me for years is that modern Satanism is not really about worshipping the Devil. At its core, it is about the worship of the ego. The individual self becomes the highest authority. It rests on ideas such as self-preservation as the highest principle, social Darwinism, "eugenics", and relative morality, where human beings themselves define what is right and wrong.
I realise that comparison may sound extremely provocative, and most of it may happen unconsciously, but I am actually quite serious about it. When I look at parts of the corporate world, I often see many of those same values expressed in a more socially acceptable form.
Self-preservation becomes career advancement, even if the "collateral damage" is other people.
Social Darwinism becomes competition between individuals, departments, and organisations. Pure "survival of the fittest".
Eugenics becomes the tendency to continuously reproduce the same leadership profiles by selecting people who think alike, behave alike, and share the same values and assumptions.
Relative morality appears whenever decisions that would be considered questionable in one context suddenly become acceptable because they improve efficiency, shareholder value, or quarterly results.
I am not claiming that companies are Satanic per se. I am simply pointing out that if you remove the religious language and look only at the underlying values, the overlap can at times be surprisingly difficult to ignore.
What resonated most with me, however, was your observation about overqualification.
I have often wondered whether the issue is not competence itself, but perceived threat. A manager may happily hire someone less experienced than themselves. Hiring someone substantially more experienced requires a degree of confidence and security that is unfortunately not always present.
How do you convince someone that you genuinely do not aspire to their chair?
How do you convince them that your priorities may have changed, that life experience may have altered your ambitions, and that you may be perfectly content contributing without climbing?
Many recruiters seem unable to imagine that possibility. They assume everyone is still playing the same game.
The irony is that organisations often claim to seek the best people, while quietly filtering out candidates who might challenge existing assumptions. It can easily result in a situation where the common denominator gradually becomes the safest rather than the strongest candidate.
I like to say: Don't hire for the best cultural fit, but for the best challenging of the culture.
I also suspect this is particularly true in Denmark. We like to think of ourselves as egalitarian and non-hierarchical, yet there is often a surprisingly strong pressure towards conformity. We are comfortable with people who fit expected patterns. We become less comfortable when somebody steps outside them.
Another aspect of your article that struck me is the tendency to equate decisiveness with competence. Fast decisions are often celebrated, while thoughtful decisions are interpreted as hesitation. Yet experience tends to teach the opposite lesson. The longer you have lived and worked, the more aware you become of complexity, unintended consequences, and the limits of certainty.
I would love to be asked, “Are you able to make fast decisions?”
My answer would promptly be:
“Yes. I just did.” :-)
Perhaps what many organisations are really selecting for is not competence, but predictability. Not necessarily the most capable candidate, but the candidate who most closely resembles their existing mental model of success.
That may also explain why experienced people sometimes struggle more than expected. The very experiences that taught them nuance, humility, empathy, and complexity can make them appear less certain than someone who has not yet discovered how complicated reality actually is.
Like you, I hope there is another path. Not because I think ambition is wrong, and not because I think leadership is wrong, but because I believe a healthy society should also have room for people whose primary strengths are wisdom, empathy, integrity, mentorship, and care. If every institution rewards only the traits associated with competition and self-interest, we should not be surprised when those traits become dominant throughout society.
I just bumped into a newspaper on the Internet that I didn't know of, an English language paper about Sweden, the Sweden Herald. And there is a tiny note about a topic that has been talked about a lot, but, you know how it goes – the news in general loses interest in things that are still bad but unchanged. In this case, something new may have happened (it is not certain yet), and therefore the note – the article is here: https://swedenherald.com/article/report-union-suspends-action-against-tesla
It's about Tesla. In Sweden, workers at the receiving terminals that take in Tesla cars to Sweden (they arrive by ship, as they are not produced locally) are on strike. they refuse to offload the cars, and they are blocking others from doing it. It has been like that for the last two years now! And the reason: Tesla refuses to make a collective agreement with the trade union. In the USA, Tesla also don't want to make agreements with trade unions, and there is is generally accepted by the society, because of the cynicism I mentioned in my article. People in the USA by large see it as good that the low paid workers can be kept down, because that will make the cars cheaper, becaise it maintains the divisive society that the middle class believes it benefits from – and just because. In Sweden, Musk has decided to destroy the power ot the trade unions by similarly refuse to make an agreement about work conditions, salaries, etc.
This "just because", fits well with your description of satanism as a concept, because even without satan himself, this is pure evil. Honestly! And I am not aware of what the workers demand here, but it is probably similar to what they demand from all other larger employers, so it shouldn't rock any boat. But Musk hates trade unions, and he is willing to lose lots of money in sales in Sweden for the purpose of proving that he is the master, he decides, and the workers have nothing to say.
It's about principles and power, not about reason or even profit.
This is social Darwinism in its highest incarnation, as Musk could make such an agreement just like that, losing nothing on it, and become more popular by doing it – but to him, it is more important to display to the world that workers are nothing, and he is almighty. That they are in different worlds, and he feels no empathy or responsibility for them.
Tesla is just one of many companies that have displayed such a behavior. Often completely irrational, but the managers in the process are being rewarded for standing firm against the workers.
Competence is definitely not all about knowing how to do things, it is very much also – or only – about attitude and mentality. You just have to fit the expected way of thinking, or esle you do not fit in. I think you are right in seeing this as fear for a threat that you could be, if they let you in with more strength than you strictly speaking need for the job.
The hires are not the best, you're right. If they are those that look most like those who are there, we could indeed benefit from hiring some others instead – as you say, those who could challenge status quo and help developing the company.
That question about fast decisions: your reply is funny, but I have been asked this many times, and I always try to explain that I can, but I typically don't want to, because decisions get better if they are based on careful considerations. That always fall short of their expectations, and sometimes they start explaining that sometimes there's no time to think... Well, why should that be an excuse for making a bad decision? I then ask. And the light in their eyes goes out in that moment, from when they just try to end the interview.
You touch something important: that it looks to some people like you are insecure and fambling for an answer, if you want to bring in some experience and good reasoning. They often ask a question that are supposed to be answered quickly, so if you spend time answering it well, you are automatically wrong in their eyes. Your experience is not interesting when all they wanted was to tick off something on their list of desired skills, and to them, "not interesting" means "do not hire".
Many companies are modelled somewhat after the military command structure, which is a deliberate choise. In such a structure, if to consider it as it really is, you are exptected to lose losts of members (when soldiers and officers die in a war), so everybody is supposed to be dispensable, hence, nobody is they for their personal qualifications – only for their ability to fill in a defined position, that makes the structure stay intact.
For that reason, I doubt that most companies will change. At least the existing companies. You need to construct something that has a non-military basis and philosophy, and then you need to find people who are not ruined by that traditional company thinking, but who can actually work well under the new settings.
It is more difficult than one would imagine to replace what is almost a complete, known, world – with something we don't even know what is.
The carrot to aim for is, though, that everybody will benefit, because such an organization will not be designed to be destroyed and rebuilt non-stop – it can grow positively, based on the values created, and people in it can grow with the company.
Of course, the broken people who know only power struggles and back-stabbing will suffer, should they ever enter, so they must stay out. What to do with them, I don't know, but maybe they can get a job at Tesla.
Dear Jørgen,
Your story about Elon Musk and Tesla reminded me of something else: How relative morality may have been born, or at least institutionalised.
The story goes that Henry Ford, after improving production efficiency and increasing output, wanted to lower the price of his cars so ordinary people could afford them. The Dodge brothers, who were investors in Ford Motor Company, preferred larger dividends. The matter eventually ended up in court, and the court effectively sided with the principle that the company should primarily serve the interests of its shareholders.
Whether that specific case deserves all the credit or blame is less important than the principle behind it. Once shareholder interests become the highest moral priority, many things begin to change. Decisions that would previously have been questioned morally suddenly become not only acceptable but praiseworthy.
There are many examples where economics and capitalism have gradually bent morality rather than simply operating within it.
In the case of Tesla and Sweden, my understanding is that the resistance to collective agreements is ultimately about maintaining managerial freedom and keeping labour costs down. In other words, favouring those higher in the pyramid over those lower in it. Whether one agrees with unions or not, it is difficult not to notice that the moral argument often shifts depending on whose interests are being protected.
That is what I find fascinating. Morality appears absolute right up until the moment it becomes expensive. Then suddenly it becomes negotiable. And again, it is one of the pillars in modern satanism.
Yes, this also ties into your point about social Darwinism. The strongest defence of these systems is often that they are efficient. The strongest criticism is that efficiency gradually becomes the measure by which everything else is judged. Once efficiency becomes the highest virtue, empathy, loyalty, fairness, craftsmanship, wisdom, and community all risk becoming secondary concerns.
Another thing your article made me think about is our collective obsession with speed.
Fast decisions Fast growth Fast careers Fast communication Fast responses.
Perhaps I am simply getting old, but I increasingly find myself wanting the opposite. I want to slow down. I want longer conversations. I want decisions that are thought through. I want fewer words and more meaning. I want depth instead of velocity.
Yet many organisations seem to equate speed with intelligence. If somebody answers immediately, they are decisive. If somebody reflects before answering, they are hesitant. Experience suggests exactly the opposite. The more one understands a subject, the more one tends to appreciate its complexity.
I have always found it amusing that organisations ask for wisdom and then structure their processes in ways that reward impulsiveness.
It is all about worshipping the intellect. As you know, I work with Kabbalah. The intellect is only one side of the tree of life. The other side is represented by intuition and feelings. When those two sides meet in a balanced blend, true gnosis happens.
Your observations about military structures also resonate with me. Many organisations are indeed built around assumptions inherited from command-and-control systems. The individual becomes less important than the role. The role becomes less important than the structure. The structure becomes more important than the human beings it was originally intended to serve.
The irony is that companies often claim that people are their greatest asset while simultaneously designing systems around the assumption that everyone is replaceable.
What gives me some hope is that reality eventually has a way of self-correcting.
I think of some of the large organisations we both know. They often achieve impressive results despite of their obvious flaws, but I sometimes wonder how much more they could achieve if they operated from healthier principles. I find myself thinking that their success may have happened despite certain aspects of their culture rather than because of them.
The dream, at least for me, is not the destruction of existing organisations. It is the creation of better ones.
Perhaps the first step would be to replace the HR department with a Corporate Philosophy department.
Instead of asking: “How do we optimise people?” the question becomes: “What kind of human beings are we trying to help become successful here?”
That seems like a much more interesting question. And since every new department needs a manager, I would like to nominate you for the role.
You can start on Monday.
Thanks for the job! I will immediately start implementing the latest management fad of the month, just to show the employees that it's not about them, it's about some arbitrary principles that I read about in a bestselling book (where I read only a few phrases from the foreword).
And then, only then, when they claim to follow the method we work after, we can start pretending that we value the individuals – meaning, those who are particularly good at following the method. Those individuals.
That will make me popular with my management, which is the most important to me, being a Corporate Philosophy Manager – after all, what is a corporation if not the managers can stick together?
And, fun aside, this is partly what those large organizations we both know, that you mentioned, are based on. As the concept is self-enforcing, in that any result coming out of it is claimed to prove that it works, leading to doing it even more, any role that is about asking questions will only be successful if the answers to the question fit the expectations. Questions are rethorical, not means to change perspectives.
About Tesla in Sweden: it is a bit weird to try getting information about the effect of the strike and blockade – reports vary from significant influence on the decline of Tesla sales, to "no effect at all", depending on who talks about it – just another example of how we speak business speak more than actually try to inform each other (ref. your reel in the chat).
While I understand why you want to repair what is broken, rather than tear down and buiild something else, which can seem daunting and perhaps not even get better, I don't think it will help at all in the business corporations. They sometimes do that – they adjust their way of talking about themselves by setting up a QA department, or a Lean department, or whatever, that can then be used as part of a marketing narrative, internally and externally, but which will always operate at a level way below the top management, who will continue doing what they always do. In fact, sometimes the top management will not even know that there's such a department, and they don't really care.
Trying to change an old organization, based on military principles, is like buying a new kind of weapon for it, but still maintaining the same command structure, and the same tactics. That new weapon might never be used at all, despite its apparent advantages, because it isn't supported by the way of working – the middle managers will send out the cavalry first, then the tanks, and only when everything else has failed, they might allow for a progressive young officer to employ the new weapon, but secretly, and only in a remote corner of the war. Whatever comes out of it will never be used for any strategy changes.
Personally, I don't want neither war nor weapons at work. I want people, who really do something because they want to, and who do it in ways they enjoy, to get results they can be proud of. It may be that this generates money, but, realistically – the money earned by a few shareholders, held up against the happiness and ability to survive for hundreds of thousands of employees, and millions of customers – which should weight more? Without producing happiness, a company has no right to exist. And then, indeed, we can hope for reality to be self-correcting.
About the morality: you're right, it is often replaced by profit, because nobody wants to pay for the morality. But I think it often was, from the start, just a word. Many planners and managers in the organization never had morality as a key parameter for anything they were doing. They just used it to talk about what they were doing in a way that more people could digest.